


rinse and repeat

by VaguelyCreativeName



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Community: HPFT, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV Second Person, Sad Remus Lupin, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:42:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24896368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaguelyCreativeName/pseuds/VaguelyCreativeName
Summary: CW: Self Harm
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	rinse and repeat

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Self Harm

Repetition is a funny thing. If you do something, and I mean anything often enough, you develop a habit and people eventually stop noticing. In fact, they sort of expect it of you, and don’t think twice about it, if only you’ve been doing it long enough. Because really, it’s not out of the ordinary if the boy constantly racking up scrapes and scratches does so a bit faster. He’s probably just clumsy. And he’s always been wearing jumpers, September to April, so it’s not really that strange to only see him in long sleeves in May as well. Everyone’s been too stressed over exams, or otherwise too excited about summer to realise – or to care, really – you didn’t take them off for June or July either.

If you’re honest with yourself, most of the school doesn’t know you exist anyway, or if they do it’s only as ‘the quiet one’ or ‘that prefect one’, and you’re glad for it, as it means you take to flying under the radar as easily as James did to a broom. Navigating your dorm room is more difficult; although you’ve always been reticent of showing any more of you than strictly necessary, which gives you some leeway, you can’t help but think your behaviour provides a stark contrast to you roommates strutting around basically – well, starkers. You hope you can appropriate the pretext of puberty and feelings of insecurity about your changing body as an excuse for having become increasingly cagey over the past year. Not that you’d ever tell them that, and if they’ve discussed it among themselves, they thankfully didn’t mention anything to you, but you’d much rather that’s what they assume.

Of course, they also know why you’re accumulating scars in the first place and should recognise these new ones have nothing to do with lycanthropy. At least, they’re not directly linked; even if they, like seemingly everything else in your life, boil down to the full moon. You can’t quite remember how or when you first found out, but the weaker you are in the days leading up to the transformations, the weaker the wolf. And the weaker the wolf, the less likely you are to fully lose control. Even if it means taking longer in recovery, that morsel of control over a night of otherwise unrestrained chaos, calamity, catastrophe spent tearing your surroundings and self apart is not something you’re willing to part with. You lose about one week in four to the hospital wing, but if it means keeping a part of yourself during those haunting nights, putting in extra effort in class seems like a small price to pay. It also makes you bleed more easily into the background, withdrawing deeper and deeper into yourself. Plus, fewer people aware of your existence for the first three weeks equates to hardly anyone missing you in the fourth.

Naturally, your friends are keenly aware something’s changed, perceptive gits that they are, as much as you’d rather pretend you didn’t catch James and Peter exchanging concerned looks over breakfast, and again over dinner. You were conveniently absent for lunch, thanks to some forgotten Runes essay you finished nearly a fortnight ago. Sirius, perhaps, has been the hardest to trick, and, let’s face it, you’re fairly certain you haven’t fooled him at all as you lie unresponsive when he climbs into your bed after fighting his own hopeless, haunted, likely doomed battle. You’re panicked, petrified, torn between dread and yearning at the thought of your friend feeling your scars – those scars, you don’t really care about the old ones, not anymore – through your shirt. But his arms never stray from your torso, and though this ought to make you feel safe, both of you, tethering yourselves to the world and each other, you flee, stumbling silently to the bath room.

You don’t recall how or when intentionally exhausting your body and trying to catch colds as casually as your friends do quaffles developed into more deliberately destructive manoeuvres, but they did. After all, draining the wolf of blood is the quickest and easiest way to depress him, even if it means dragging yourself down in the process. You cast a lazy Diffindo, reopening several scars, well aware that you haven’t practiced any other spell quite as often as the Severing Charm. You can hear Sirius on the other side of the conscientiously locked door, knocking and mumbling as uncomfortably hot blood amasses in the crook of your arm. The cut eventually peters out – you know never to go too deep – and you begin cleaning it, Sirius still on the door, louder now, pounding and howling how he can’t take it anymore, and can’t you please, please, stop, and though you hate imagining your friend in such a state, you know you couldn’t keep such a promise, and thus stay silent. Because that’s the thing about repetition. Even if you don’t want to live up to expectations, habits become harder and harder to break.


End file.
